Parents' Guide to Castle Cats

This RPG barely manages to provide gameplay, but instead tugs at the heartstrings of players in the name of charity for all of your money. The rise of the new "idle" genre is somewhat baffling. Who'd have thought people would enjoy firing up a game and then doing nothing but wait or pay not to? That's what you have here: very little gameplay, but lots of waiting and plenty of encouragement to spend. Castle Cats uses the familiar energy method of limiting gameplay, and while that's certainly valid, this version of it's particularly stingy. You get ten minutes max of free gameplay; after that if you want to continue, you'll have to break open your piggy bank. Perhaps realizing the potential for hesitation, the app frequently pushes you to watch videos to "earn" rewards, and right now, it's manipulating you even further by saying your purchases can "save the world." (A dollar from every purchase goes to one of various cat rescue organizations.) Of course, the reluctance to let you play the game could be an attempt to hid the app's utter lack of gameplay. So-called quests involve tapping the screen nonstop while a static battle plays out between your heroes and various doggie villains. It appears no attempt was made to make combat fun to do or even fun to watch, and considering how cute all the characters are, that's a real shame. The app does a real disservice to its pop culture referencing heroes (Catniss the archer anyone?) by preventing you from doing much with them except buying them all and admiring your collection. This one's for true cat fanatics only; if that doesn't describe you, give this one a pass.